Tameichi Hara

Tameichi Hara (16 October 1900-10 October 1980) was a captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II and the only IJN destroyer commander who survived commanding a ship from the start of the war to the end of the war.

Biography
Tameichi Hara was born in Kagawa Prefecture, Japan on 16 October 1900, and he graduated from the Imperial Japanese Navy Academy in 1921. He became a surface warfare instructor in 1932, and he was the captain of the destroyer Amatsukaze at the start of World War II in December 1941. His ship assisted in the conquest of Indonesia and in the Solomon Islands campaign, and his ship was severely damaged at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in November 1942. Hara was given command of Destroyer Division 27 during the later stages of the Guadalcanal campaign, captaining the Shigure. In November 1943, he was reassigned as Senior Torpedo Instructor at the Naval Torpedo School in Oppama after Shigure returned to Sasebo to refit, and his last battle command was that of the cruiser Yahagi at the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. He ended the war at Kawatana while training Japanese Shinyo suicide boatmen, and he witnessed the effects of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki first-hand. His postwar memoirs served as an important source for historians, and he died in 1980 at the age of 79.